About the Show

"THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO ERASE THE PROBLEM OF YOUR OWN EXISTENCE"

As Ed, a widower, prepares to celebrate Christmas, he calls his three grown sons back to the family home. Games are played, Chinese food is ordered, and brotherly pranks and trashtalk distract them from the ongoing issue that threatens to ruin the festivities: when personal identity is essential and privilege is a problem, what is a straight white man to do? Raucous, surprising and fearless—experimental playwright Young Jean Lee takes an outside look at the traditional father/son play narrative, shedding new and often hilarious light on a story we think we know all too well.

A Korean American playwright whose work “revels in subverting stereotypes” (NPR), she approaches the work from the position of outsider, examining human behavior in a way that is as hilarious as it is revealing.

“When starting a play, I ask myself, ‘What's the last show in the world I would ever want to make?’ Then I force myself to make it. I do this because going out of my comfort zone compels me to challenge my assumptions and find value in unexpected places. Straight White Men isn’t “about” privilege or attempting to reveal anything new about it or solve it. I was more curious about the question, ‘If I woke up tomorrow and I was a straight white man, what would I do?’” - Young Jean Lee